M: Son of the Century

An international bestseller, this is an anti-fascist history lesson disguised as a novel. Italy is exhausted, tired of the political class and the inept moderates and agonising machinations of a democracy that no longer seems to be working. While the leaders of the country have sat idly in the safety of parliament, achieving nothing, one man on the outside has risen to the top. A misfit par excellence, a protector of the demobilised, a lost drifter searching for the way, he speaks for the outcasts, renegades and the ideologically pure. He is a former socialist leader ousted by his party, the director of a small opposition newspaper, and a tireless political agitator. Like an animal he can smell that change is coming. His name is Benito Mussolini. M tells the story of the rise of Fascism from within the mind of its founder. Rich in historical detail and interspersed with real documents and sources, this is a masterful work with urgent resonance for our times. Lucy Hughes-Hallett in the New Statesman said, 'Panoptic and polyphonic, Scurati's book gives us the experiences of the fearful and the feared, the rhetoric of both the revolutionaries and the reactionaries.' A huge 773 page softback.